NORTH AUGUSTA, S.C. — With only a couple short breaks to rest during his second 32 minutes of basketball in less than 14 hours, point guard and Michigan State recruit Foster Loyer scored 15 points, hit three times from 3-point range, handed out four assists and directed his team to a 17-point victory in a pool-play game at the 2017 Nike EYBL Peach Jam. All this looked like it might present a bit of a problem for his father.

“I always try to pick out one or two things from a game,” John Loyer told Sporting News. “Sometimes, you say too much. Sometimes, you say too little. Just like coaching.”

John Loyer has an uncommon perspective when he watches his son play for All-Ohio Red on the AAU circuit, and not just because for this game he is standing above the court on the running track at the Riverview Park Activities Center. (Up here, it is pleasantly impossible to hear other fans’ comments, good or bad).

John is not just Foster’s father, he is his personal coach. And John happens to be one of the bright basketball minds in America, someone who has X-and-O’d his way from Bob Huggins’ side at Akron and Cincinnati to nearly two decades in the NBA.

Foster is a 6-0 point guard who scored 29 points for Clarkston High in the Michigan Class A championship game and led Clarkston High to victory, not long after he’d committed to coach Tom Izzo to join the Michigan State Spartans in 2018.

“It’s hard to pass up a chance to play for Coach Izzo,” Foster told SN. “There’s nothing two-sided about him. He tells you how he feels. Kind of like my dad.”

What is it like to be a basketball parent whose coaching instincts are inescapable? SN watched Thursday morning’s game between Foster’s All-Ohio Red squad and the Playaz Basketball Club to get an idea.

“It’s harder to watch as a parent than it is to coach,” John said. “Even to coach in the NBA.”

He chews on a red straw as he observes, presumably to relieve the stress, but he is analytical, not maniacal. After one of Foster’s few mistakes, trying to throw a deep pass against the press that becomes a turnover, John half-hollers, “Foster, make the easy play!” As one would expect, John also notices a few referee decisions that peeve him, but the harshest interjection he delivers is, no kidding, “Jiminy Christmas!”

After All-Ohio Red has escaped from a sluggish start to take a slight lead, Foster nailed a corner 3-pointer in transition to make it a 7-point game early in the second half. John exclaimed, “Best play of the tournament right there.” He later would say it changed the entire game in the team’s favor. But he wasn’t talking about Foster’s jumper; he was focused on the pass to the corner from 6-0 guard Braden Norris of Bradley High in Hilliard, Ohio.

John noted that after that play, All-Ohio became more intent, as a team, on moving the ball to open shooters. They wound up shooting 50 percent from the field and outscored Playaz by 15 in the second half.

When at home, the Loyers visit the Clarkston High gym every day for training sessions. In private, both say it will often become more intense.

“He likes to say that a lot of people don’t like the truth, but the truth is what’s going to make you better. So that’s kind of his little saying,” Foster told SN. “After a game, if I played well, he’ll let me know I played well. But if I didn’t play well, or I played bad, he’ll let me know that as well. I’d say there’s a little bit of yelling, but most of it is, ‘Take what’s said, not how it’s said,’ from my perspective. He’s just trying to make me better.”

The importance of excellent coaching is something the Loyer family deeply understands. John played for Huggins at Akron and worked with him for nearly a dozen years. In the pros he spent time under Lawrence Frank, Avery Johnson and Maurice Cheeks. When the latter was fired by the Detroit Pistons in February 2014, John completed the season as interim head coach.

When John left New Jersey for Detroit in 2011, while Foster was in middle school, he was in Michigan a few months earlier than wife Katie and their three children. John looked into the high school programs near the Pistons’ location in Auburn Hills and was most impressed with Clarkston and head coach Dan Fife, who coached his sons Dugan and Dane as well as former NBA regular Tim McCormick.

That’s right: John and his wife chose to buy their house based not so much on property values or school systems or whether there was shopping and entertainment nearby. They had Foster’s high school basketball career in mind.

“Picked the coach, not the school. Just like recruiting,” John said. Foster’s Michigan State decision was based on the same principle.

“I don’t know if that’s the value of me being a coach, or the negative,” John said with a smile.

John currently is working as a scout for the Los Angeles Clippers, and he attempts to work his schedule around opportunities to see Foster play. After his tenure with the Pistons ended and he got the chance to spend more time with Foster, to work with him more on the game, John decided he preferred this job.

“I still think sometimes I want to coach again – but I wouldn’t leave for his senior year,” John said. “You don’t get many senior years. You need to be a dad sometimes.”

Foster had the advantage of growing up around some of the greatest players in the world and fell in love with basketball as a child in Portland, while his father worked for the Trail Blazers. He worked as a ball boy for the team.

“When they’d shut the lights off, they’d lower the rims, and I’d go down and shoot on the court with no lights on,” Foster said. “Just little things like that, seeing all the famous players and wanting to be like them motivated me to continue to work.”

In Philadelphia, he met Allen Iverson, Andre Miller and Kyle Korver. In Detroit, as he was growing in the game, he met Kyle Singler and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. He and Brandon Jennings shared the same shoe size. “So I got a couple shoes,” Foster said.

There is less of a personal connection for Foster with the Clippers, whose games are played more than 2,000 miles away from home. But there is more of one with his father, even if one of their shared pastimes is breaking down video of Foster’s games.

“It helps me a lot. He’s the guy I go and work out with every day. He passes 1,000 balls to me,” Foster said. “He’s that guy that’s there for me every day in the gym, every day in the weight room. Having him around has been very special for me. If he was out coaching, he would never be around. Things would be a lot different. It means a lot to me to have him around.”

Some of All-Ohio’s starters were gone from Thursday morning’s game as it neared an end, and the team was too far ahead to be caught, but Foster remained to protect the ball as the seconds dwindled. There wasn’t much he could have done better; there was just one other turnover, he made all his free throws and the victory helped ease the disappointment of a narrow loss late Wednesday night.

John said the one or two things he would mention following this performance was for Foster to be even more vocal – he communicated consistently on defense, and he was giving directions between free throws with the game well in hand – and to try to get the team off to a better start.

“It’s a balancing act, just like coaching,” John said. “He can handle it, so I probably go a little tougher on him. But I’ve also found out I’ve been around him so much, said so much to him that I don’t have to be critical.